As with many other processes, the desire to increase the throughput and efficiency of present systems for producing continuous strand mats has been felt. The physical properties of the mat can be greatly affected by increasing the throughput of the feeder, especially in those processes wherein, contemporaneously, continuous glass filaments are produced, gathered into a plurality of bundles and deposited on a moving conveyor as a mat wherein the bundles or strands arranged in a planar array are oscillated back and forth across the width of the conveyor.
For example, by merely increasing the throughput of the fiber forming feeder, the mat produced may have more tensile strength in the cross machine direction as opposed to the machine direction.
The present invention provides a system wherein the throughput of the system can be increased while achieving the desired tensile strength characteristics in a highly dispersed or filamentized mat of continuous glass filaments.